How Smoking can affect fertility

Many men and women know that smoking raises a risk for cardiovascular and heart disease.  It also may bring about a negative effect on fertility in both women and men.  It is not only on getting pregnant; it’s actually on then keeping the pregnancy because the miscarriage rate is higher in smokers. The contents of cigarette smoke contain carbon monoxide, nicotine, cyanide and there are more than 100 other carcinogens compounds in a cigarette smoke.

How Smoking can affect fertility

Smoking damages the hereditary substance of the semen and the eggs hence, it increases the degrees of miscarriage and birth defects. Thus, there is a quantitative relationship in the rate of infertility for both male and female, which is twice as compared to those who smoke when it will come in vitro fertilization. It is quite hard to express exactly how many babies are especially small or so are stillborn because of smoking, as there are a number of factors. But if you have to take a close look in a smoking cohort of people and a non-smoking cohort of men and women, all of those activities are higher at the smoking group. Despite IVF remedy method smokers are not able to reach pregnancy. Female smokers require more medicines during IVF than non-smokers and yet still don’t produce as many eggs using extra medicines.

How Smoking Affects Female Fertility

Smoking can cause infertility in females and some really acute problems like cervical cancer, damage to the eggs or damage to the developing fetus and implantation of a less healthy embryo and increased chances of miscarriage. More a female smokes, more time it takes for her conception to take place. Due to smoking, unfavorable changes occur in the uterine lining which makes fewer chances of implantation of a healthy embryo. Also, due to cervical changes, these women are at an increased risk of having cervical cancer. It is highly recommended that if quitting smoking does not seem to be on cards, one should at least try to cut it down.

How Smoking Affects Male Fertility

Smoking can negatively affect male’s fertility. For both men and women, smoking causes an increased risk of developing many cancers, emphysema, heart diseases, and other health problems. Excessive smoking directly affects not only the lungs but the complete body, especially, the respiratory system. In males, smoking affects the quality and health of semen and also results in decreased sperm count, sperm morphology and sperm motility. Apart from this, there are also fewer success rates of IVF.  Male smoking not only affects his sperm count and quality but also causes infertility in females.

How Smoking affects New Born Babies

Smoking results in increased chances of birth defects during pregnancy. It can result in problems like low birth weight, miscarriage or premature birth. Smoking during pregnancy causes an increased risk of limb defects, heart and cardiovascular defects, missing fingers or toes and clubfoot. Most of these birth defects occur in the very early stages of pregnancy, sometimes before a woman even realizes that she is pregnant. Therefore, waiting to quit smoke until you get pregnant is no solution to reduce the chances of these birth defects to your unborn child.

Smoking and IVF-ICSI Success

Effect of male smoking is also associated with the success rate of IVF with ICSI treatment. In ICSI treatment, the single sperm is directly guided into the egg for fertilization. This method is mostly used when there is moderate to severe male infertility or when previous IVF treatment has failed due to unknown reasons. Studies have found that the success rate of IVF is better in those women whose partners are non-smokers, compared to those whose partners smoked. It is always worth to quit smoking if you and your partner are undergoing a fertility treatment, to improve the chances of the success rate of the treatment.

How to get rid of it

Undoubtedly, smoking leads to some long-term fertility damages. However, the fertility rates can improve after one year of quitting. Many women continue smoking till the time they conceive. It is best that they should quit smoking much time before, most likely, when they begin to start planning a family. Quitting smoking even before trying to get pregnant can result in improved chances of conceiving, healthy implantation of an embryo, lower risk of miscarriage and decreased risk of birth defects in the child. Quitting smoking much before you get pregnant is beneficial for the health of both females as well as her future baby.